There are already known different ways of making cardboard containers, particularly in corrugated cardboard, which are formed from a panel cut out and scored and which, after transportation and storage flat, are set up at a variable height as a function of the thickness of the objects to be packaged.
These containers are often provided with a longacting adhesive when they are adapted to be used manually, the closure of the container about the objects being obtained by stripping the adhesive then applying to it a tongue provided with the adhesive on the panel located facing it.
In another version, the container must be formed by means of a machine which performs the operation automatically no matter what the final height of the container containing the objects to be packaged.
The supply of such a machine poses problems whose difficulty arises from the fact that two successively set-up containers can have different heights according to the height of the objects that each contains.
It must be emphasized that this problem is not at all the more simple one of supplying a machine on the one hand with containers and on the other hand with objects all identical to each other, in which case all sorts of mechanisms could be used which operate repetitively and in the same way.
On the contrary, with containers comprising different objects, there appears a phase intermediate to filling of the container and its closure, which is that of handling it in a stable manner, between partial folding of the container before emplacement of the objects on the base, and until closure of the container.
The present invention permits providing a semi-automatic packaging thanks to the economical design of containers, permitting the use of prolonged effect adhesive or glue (particularly that known as xe2x80x9chot meltxe2x80x9d) by assuring their stability, thanks to which the assembly of container and objects can be subjected to displacements without separation and can be subjected to closure operations when perfectly positioned.
To this end, the invention has for its object a container of hardboard or similar material adapted for the packaging of objects such as books, discs and other solid objects, formed from a panel that can be folded transversely to form from a sheet that can be folded transversely to form the panels of which one is a base for the reception of objects, lateral flaps which are to be folded down from above against objects disposed on the base, two small transverse surfaces and a closure tongue, which sheet is constituted from a flat blank formed of two rectangular parallel portions having two transverse end edges and two longitudinal edges, and connected to each other by an isosceles triangular tongue of which one side is cut away whilst the other side and the base are each formed by a bend line, that of the base being at the longitudinal edge common to the two portions, over a short length, opposite a single panel, characterized in that the first of the two rectangular portions is an end panel which is connected to the triangular tongue formed in the contour of the second portion, which second portion has a length such that the two transverse end edges are substantially offset relative to those of the first portion, one in front of and the other behind said transverse edges of the first portion.